


A Drawing-Down Of Blinds

by lonelywalker



Category: Foyle's War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew struggles to live up to his father's example. Sam, naturally, has her own opinion on the matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Drawing-Down Of Blinds

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Antumbral and Kittydesade for their help. The title is taken from Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth".
> 
> Written for Gramarye

 

 

There's a man in Hastings. He's a very quiet, unassuming sort of man in a town that, despite the violence associated with it in the mind of every English schoolboy, has developed into a very quiet, unassuming sort of place. He's not physically imposing, not the type to use his height or girth to intimidate rather than his words. And those words, well... He looks you straight in the eye, and says:

"My name's Foyle. I'm a policeman."

The way he says it, it's almost as if it's a question rather than a statement, as if he's searching for some kind of approval from the very witnesses and suspects he's interviewing. There are so many authority figures these days, so many men and women in uniforms that seem to become more ornate by the minute, that it should be difficult to take a man like this seriously. Rumour has it that he's been mistaken for a farmer in the past, for a petty bureaucrat who should simply be humoured, or ignored entirely. And, if I didn't know him, if he weren't my father, perhaps I might make the mistake of doing the same. 

Uniform has become a sort of armour in England, ever since it became obvious that this war, like so many others I had learned about at Oxford, would never be over by Christmas. It's become difficult to walk around - an able-bodied young man - on English streets without attracting accusatory glances, or worse. Looking at photographs of myself from the years before the war, I'm almost embarrassed by how naïve I was, how little I was contributing to my country, to my family, or to anyone, really. I was a young fool poring over books and going out drinking and dancing - probably more of the latter than the former if I'm being honest. Now, the leather jacket of the RAF attracts more admiration than allegations of cowardice, even though it still feels as though I'm shirking my duty if I scrounge up a weekend pass without at least a scrape on my forehead from falling over my own feet to count for a war wound.

He'd have liked to go, I think. Maybe "liked" is the wrong way to put it, and really he's already done his part, in a war that was raging across Europe before I was old enough to understand what war even was. If he hadn't gone then, if the young men of his generation hadn't put aside their schoolbooks and easy lives to take up weapons and crawl across the dirt and wastelands of France, then I probably wouldn't even have this chance to defend my country now. But does anyone seriously take any of that into account, seeing a man without a uniform on the streets? There's so much of a need to prove in some way that you're doing your bit, that you're suffering along with everyone else, that it's become second nature to point the finger at anyone who seems to have it easy. Even if, were anyone to scratch the surface, the truth is precisely the opposite. 

\- "Andrew?"

I don't remember my grandfather as being anything other than an old man, sitting in a chair slicing up apples, teaching me how to play Snap when I was learning my numbers. But my mother used to tell me, when I was old enough to be interested, that he was like my father in so many ways: he had that same dogged determination behind soft words and, yes, that same analytical intelligence, even if he had never risen above the rank of sergeant professionally. Nothing comes from nowhere, she'd reminded me. And, from the time I understood what it was my father did, I had nothing but respect for him, even if his rank was less of a mouthful in the days when I was a lad in short trousers who still had to be lectured to about my various attempted burglaries of next door's apple tree.

\- "What're you writing?"

\- "Oh. Sam. Just some notes... thoughts about things. So many of the lads keep a journal these days. Not just dates and reminders, either. I know Douglas used to write whole screeds each night. He was probably going to publish his memoirs after the war like he was Churchill or someone."

\- "Oooh, or a novel! You could be famous. Like Biggles!"

\- "I don't think I'm really on Biggles' level, Sam."

\- "Poppycock! He must be getting on a bit now, anyway. I bet Britain could do with a few dashing young heroes of the air. And Foyle. That's a sword, isn't it? Great name for a book. Andrew Foyle, duelling with the Germans in mid-air..."

\- "Maybe you should be the one writing it."

\- "Maybe I should. I've always thought people would be very interested to read about Mr. Foyle's cases. I mean, the war in France gets a lot of lines in a newspaper. Everyone knows about that. People are almost bored with it. But everyone loves a good murder! Well. _You_ know."

\- "Yes, Sam. I know."

Death has become almost passé since war broke out. It might seem cold-hearted to say it, because of course people are still shocked when their loved ones are killed, but we're all becoming a little immune to the sight of corpses, to the notification forms the military sends out to the families of dead soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Unless the person is someone we actually know intimately, we guard against feeling more than a vague interest. There's just only so much grief someone can take. There's only so much you can give before you find yourself falling apart.

I could say that I've had it worse than most, and people might think that I'm wallowing in self-pity. After all, an RAF pilot has it far better than those poor sods out on the front lines. I have a soft, dry bed at night. Decent food, and enough of it. The hours might be long, and I might be turned out of barracks at short notice at any time, but there's never a sudden gas attack, a sniper trying to pick me off, or the agony of never seeing my loved ones for years. Then again, I could be working in an office, could be making shells in a factory, could be out on a farm somewhere. There are plenty of men in this war who don't spend their days watching their friends die.

How can I bear to get close to anyone now? I had known Rex since the days before we cared about girls, let alone warfare. Dad remembers him as a cheerful boy with pockets full of conkers. His family probably remembers me as something similar. And this war is destroying an entire generation of those smiling, innocent children. When we win - if we win - I know it will all have been worth it. Flying missions over the Channel, keeping the Germans from winning the air war, will be a job I'll be proud to tell my children about. Never mind the university degree I might never complete, never mind if I end up burned like Greville, or missing a limb like Sergeant Milner. It's an honour to defend my country. But now, when everything is undecided, all my totals are of friends I've lost, not of victories.

\- "Do you want children, then?"

\- "Are you reading over my shoulder again?"

\- "Well. You and your father aren't exactly the most demonstrative sorts. You'd need another Chief Superintendent to figure out what either of you were thinking. I'm all in favour of this journal thing, Andrew. In fact, I think you should write down your thoughts on every major issue and mail it to me regularly."

\- "...Right."

\- "I just never thought of you as the type to settle down."

\- "Not while I'm flying and being shot at every night, no. But the war won't be on forever. I'll find a very boring, sedate desk job in London somewhere with a steady salary and I'll probably be just like my father and never do anything exciting ever again."

\- "I wouldn't really call life with Mr. Foyle unexciting. Not exactly. Did he tell you about the time a spy put some kind of special top secret powder on my brakes so that they wouldn't work? We went straight into a barn. My neck hurt for days afterwards. Jolly painful, actually."

\- "Now that you mention it, Sam, I can't imagine you settling down either."

\- "Hmm. You might be right about that."

No matter how horrific it is, though, how hard it is to bear, I try to look at the example my father has set, and his father before him. Perhaps it's the mark of a good policeman, to be dispassionate in the face of extreme circumstances. I've rarely seen him truly, honestly angry, and when he has been, it's usually been a case of emotion simmering beneath the surface, the coldness of his expression and his tone doing more damage than raging and shouting ever could.

As a boy, scraping my palms and knees, snatching apples that were just too gloriously red and shiny to resist, I hadn't grasped what I would in later life: the crux of my father's personality is that he _cares_. It's not so much a lack of passion as it is a resistance of anything that might cloud his judgement. I wonder, sometimes, what he must have been like when he was my age or only a little older, serving in the trenches of France in the Great War. He doesn't like to talk about the details, and neither do I, when I come to think about it. Even though I know, on some level, that it would be wise to write everything down for posterity's sake (or for Sam's), I just can't bring myself to do it. Perhaps, if I ever do settle down and raise children, perhaps, if they are called to fight in and endure another war, it would help them. But, for now at least, it's simply too difficult to put any more than this into words.

None of us have any idea how much longer this war will last, or who among us might still be alive and healthy by the end of it. Soon, though. We wake up every morning and pray for it to be soon. We just cannot lose any more heroes. What great things might men like Rex Talbot have done, not just for England, but for the entire world in peacetime? We need to save some of our champions for the aftermath, for the days following any eventual armistice, when we may need them more than ever.

I won't fly after the war. I know this now. However much I may love the feeling of being in the air, of mastering the equipment, of showing off my skill, it still brings with it the memories of dead friends. I might return to Oxford, but I expect that the war will leave me with a desire to do something much more immediately meaningful with my life. I don't want to push paper around a desk any more than I think Sam probably wants to start churning out babies. 

\- "Well, not _churning_ out. They'd make reaching the clutch rather difficult for a start."

\- "I should have thought of that."

\- "It's a very real problem. I'm not sure what Mr. Foyle would do without me. And it's not just driving, even if I am probably the best driver Hastings police has ever seen. Um. If I do say so myself. I'm a vital investigative tool. I've gone undercover. I've done investigations..."

\- "Dad said you hit a witness with a dustbin lid."

\- "...and I'm very resourceful." 

A man is to be respected, not because of anything he says, but because of everything he does. It's a lesson I've learned over the years, following the example of the man I respect most in the world. 

I'm hardly the quiet, unassuming type. I can hold my own in a fight (and I'm not proud to say that I've even started a few of them), but I'm not very good at holding my tongue, at examining details, at thinking analytically. I do know, though, that I'd be proud to some day be able to do these things, to be the kind of person who could calmly look a suspect in the eye and say, "My name's Foyle. I'm a policeman."

Time, I suspect, will tell.

 


End file.
